Harold Pollack over at The New Republic has a great post, complete with a neat map, on House Dems' attempts to lift the 1988 federal ban on funding for needle exchange programs—one of the single most effective weapons in the fight against HIV/AIDS. But the bills in question have been weighted down with two riders that ban federally-financed programs from an area within 1,000 feet of “colleges, universities, parks, video arcades, day-care centers, high schools, public swimming pools and other institutions” (according the NYT ed board). This means that the ban would effectively remain in urban areas, where most intravenous drug users live.

It's almost as though Congressional representatives aren't so concerned with people who, generally speaking, don't vote. What, after all, is the point of doing good if it doesn't guarantee you a job in every two years?

In the new issue of City Journal, the neoconservative urban policy magazine associated with the Manhattan Institute, Paul Beston argues against a new law in New York City banning the use of metal bats in high school baseball. Dismissing it as "nannying," Beston links the law to other recent policies in New York City like the smoking ban and the trans-fat ban. He concludes "Banning bats my seem like small ball. But it perfectly expresses the council's and the mayor's underlying belief: too much liberty is hazardous to your health."

This clearly expresses a fundamental tenet of conservative/libertarian thinking: that engaging in risky behavior with serious social costs is an entitlement. People who are injured by metal bats, or fall ill from smoking or fatty food, cost the rest of us money. We pay their emergency room bill, their Medicare bills or their Social Security disablity insurance. Only someone willing to forgo those benefits should have the right to also opt out of public health laws like those passed by the New York City Council, or pre-existing ones requiring that motorcyclists wear helmets and drivers wear seat belts. But Beston, like all conservatives, makes no serious suggestion about offering such an option in our society (much less explaining how it would be practically possible.) Instead he merely sneers at the New York City government's efforts to lower the costs that he, like all other taxpayers, will ultimately bear (and that, should rising health costs force the government to raise taxes, Beston and City Journal would surely bray against as well).

cross-posted on TAPPED.

This is a crucial health issue, not merely one for regional economic planners, because Americans have continuously walked less and driven more in recent years, and that has contributed to America's obesity epidemic. The four way intersections and business density of traditional town and city design has now been scientifically proven to facilitate more walking, and thus better public health, than the arterial cul-de-sacs and spread out strip mall shopping districts of suburban sprawl. Hopefully policymakers will take notice and write zoning codes accordingly. But, given America's sick automobile obsession, I'm not holding my breath.

 cross-posted on TAPPED.